Book Review: Eyes Like Leaves

Charles de Lint's Eyes Like Leaves was a pretty fascinating read for me, sort of a "what could have been novel". Originally written as his fourth novel, the story falls nicely into the High Fantasy sub-genre (think Lord of the Rings), rather than the Urban Fantasy he's much more connected to these days. The author actually notes in the introduction that the advice he was given by an editor at the time was only to publish if he wanted to focus future works on High, rather than Urban, Fantasy.

The story works quite nicely as a traditional quest-style novel, following a bard, a wizard in training, and a young woman who all seem to be tied together through destiny to the strange creatures who have suddenly begun attacking people throughout the land.

De Lint shines best with characters and setting, and although he does a great job with this novel, I'm a much bigger fan of his urban fantasy stories. A fun read, but really for dedicated fans rather than new readers of the author.

Book Review: A Handful of Coppers

So for my fortieth birthday my lovely wife tracked down a large number of hardcover Charles de Lint books for me, including a number I had missed out on while reading my way through his work.

Case in point A Handful of Coppers: The Early Works of Charles de Lint vol 1: High Fantasy - the book follows four separate characters through a number of short stories (and one novella), that range from straight Conan the Barbarian/Farfd and the Gray Mouser worlds through to Arthurian legend and beyond, including one book I've read before, but in context with three other stories about the character.

I'll admit some of the earliest stories are pretty rough, but with each of them you can read and watch a master storyteller develop through his early days, and for that alone it is well worth the read.

Book Review: Legend, by David Gemmell

David Gemmell's Legend (1984) is pretty much a perfect example of what I love in high fantasy novels.  High Fantasy, being stories told in a fantasy world populated by characters, events and plot best described as epic (think Lord of the Rings), is a sub-genre of Fantasy, and both Conan the Barbarian and Bilbo Baggins can fit in it with ease.

I've actually read a number of David Gemmell novels before, even ones set in the his Drenai Saga, but as I read those in Junior High and High School, I had never done the research to see if the books I was reading were part of a larger whole.

Legend is largely a novel about a siege.  In many ways it echoes the American story of the Alamo and Gemmell did cite western author Louis L'Amour as an influence.  The story involves thieves, farmers, warriors, townsfolk and an old warrior known simply as Druss the Legend, and follows these people as they defend a castle against an overwhelming force.

The story moves along at a great pace and puts a lot of value into all of it's characters, from the top down, drawing the reader into the story of this last great defence of a dying empire.

If you've never read fantasy novels before, I can't think of a better place to start.  This book reminded me of everything I fell in love with the genre as a young man and although Gemmell passed away in 2006, he left over twenty novels that I guarantee I'll be checking out myself very soon.

Book Review: Into the Green

The first of de Lint's books taking place entirely in a High Fantasy world since,Wolf Moon, Into the Green takes place in a world where witchcraft is a hereditary trait, and non-witches both fear and hunt those with a connection to a mystical realm called "the Green".

The main character, Angharad (pronounced Ann-ar-ad), is a tinker, a harpist, and after a tragic attack on her people (sorry for the mild, first chapter event spoiler in a 22-year-old book) which ends in the death of her husband, a witch.

The book then works much as a fairy tale in that she must learn about her own abilities and her world in time to save it. The imagery in the book moves from wondrous (a magician's tree house stood out especially for me) to incredibly gruesome, but at less than 250 pages, the book was a quick dip into a fantasy world I won't soon forget.

Fun, magical, and surprising musical, Into the Green is well worth the read.

Book Review: Wolf Moon

While I focused most of my efforts last month on the books published under the Penguin Horror imprint, I did set some time aside to read a number of non-horror titles, and by far my favourite was my October book by Charles de Lint, Wolf Moon.

Taking place in a realm of High Fantasy (a world of magic with no obvious connection to Earth), the novel is actually a rather small story of a Harper (a travelling musician) and his attempts to kill an escaped werewolf. The twist is that the werewolf is actually our protagonist, and the Harper the villain. For de Lint, who in every previous book he had written, to take the travelling musician (usually a good guy and protagonist in books such as Harper of the Grey Rose, Mulengo, and The Riddle of the Wren), the idea of focusing the story on the monster, and more importantly, making him sympathetic, was a lot of fun and added a lot of heart to the story.

The main character, Kern begins the story on the run from the evil Harper Tuiloch, and throughout the story finds friends, love, and perhaps even a home, if only he can find a way to outwit or defeat a man who uses his control of music and magic to control those around him.

Although the story doesn’t have the usual quest structure of high fantasy novels, its focus on the characters surrounding a small inn that Kern comes across makes the book a joy to read. A lot of fun, and yet another reason I’m really excited to be working my way through the works of Mr. de Lint.

Book Review: Lyonesse II

About twenty pages into Jack Vance's Lyonesse II: The Green Pearl, I started thinking that the book would end up an awful lot like the 1981 film Heavy Metal.  Both feature a mystical sphere of evil, which corrupts those who use it, and in the earliest chapter of Vance's follow-up to to his wonderful Lyonesse I: Suldrun's Garden the story does actually follow the set up of Heavy Metal to a large degree - person gets the pearl, pearl corrupts them, someone else kills them and takes the pearl, repeat.

What I'm really loving best about Vance's stuff however, is the fact that he starts with a relatively simple fantasy concept (magic item), and then inserts it into his larger world, showing how the various wizards, nobles and even common men of his world are affected by the item and deal with its potential for corruption.

Like the first book in the series, the story plays with high fantasy concepts as well as fairy tale concepts and blends them together into a really intriguing story, one that I'm definitely planning to complete with the award-winning conclusion to the trilogy, Lyonesse III: Maduac, which I'll be reading next month.

Really neat stuff.

Also a quick side note - the knight on a giant cat image shown on the cover is representative of some stuff that happens in the book, you just have to wait a while for it to show up.

Book Review: Lyonesse

One of the true challenges of reading High Fantasy, being fantasy stories set in imaginary worlds with epic events surrounding their main characters (for example, The Lord of the Rings), is finding titles which do not simply rehash the popular fiction already out there - for example, The Sword of Shannara (1977) is pretty clearly a knockoff of The Lord of the Rings, although its sequel, The Elfstones of Shannara (1982) does some pretty interesting and fascinating things that continued through the series.  

As a longtime reader of the sub-genre, I have to say a lot of it is pretty repetitious, and for every great novel I find, there are sure to be five or six fairly low grade stories waiting for me in the wings.

Luckily for me, Jack Vance's Lyonesse is definitely one of the great ones.  The story follows a large number of characters through the events surrounding a princess who refuses to play the role outlined for her by her birth.  As that could also describe Disney's Brave (which I enjoyed, but as a family film), let me be clear, Vance has created a pretty in-depth and amazing world with multiple kingdoms, powers and beings, all of which have their own motivations and stories, and most importantly all of which fit together to tell a story that ranges from humorous and romantic to incredibly bleak and tear-jerking.

I actually picked the book because the third in the series Lyonesse: Maduac, won the World Fantasy Award in 1990, and I'm slowly but surely making my way through the list of winners. Vance is also well known for his series The Dying Earth and if it is anywhere near as good as I found Lyonesse, I'll be sure to be checking that out as well.